I liked his point made about how one doesn’t know what social networking sites will work at the time of creation. He mentioned that he had created one that he was sure would work - but it didn’t. We all have such good ideas sometimes, but… when they don’t end up fulfilling our dream they can become more of a stone around our necks if we don’t see that the failure is ok. His mentioning of Shirkey’s comment “failure is free” was really great. I think in today’s world where we are constantly bombarded with the “must do”, must achieve” attitude, that it’s good to be reminded that failure is ok AND sometimes necessary in order to move on. His comment about having to be “willing to move on or morph” is most likely one of the major characteristics that I see is a must in an educator in any subject area. Information in all arenas is constantly being updated, changing so quickly and the “truth” changes with it… we have to be willing to follow along, or lead into the next “truth”.
As for his point about the network needing to fulfill some compelling need – it again seems to cover all bases… No single person can figure out what everyone else’s needs are… sometimes they don’t know what it is either… until “something” clicks… apparently with the wide variety and potentials that these Social Networks have created they seem to fill a void that perhaps has always been there, but just never recognized by the contributors before.
Hi, Joan!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking this week that social media is much more about the "pull" than the "push"--that is, the need to allow the users to pull the media into areas they want than to try to push our methods. Perhaps this is a part of the pedagogy "baked into" social media. A system that doesn't allow (or even promote) failure is a system that won't easily change for the better...
Steve